If Andrew the Maltese can do it, so can America's other great underdog

I realised America had changed as soon as I landed in New York last week. I told the taxi driver the name and address of my hotel but received no response as he drove off.

When we got to Manhattan, he kept asking for the name of the cross street. ‘It’s on Prince,’ I kept saying.

But he kept mumbling: ‘Wha’? Wha’?’

Republican presidential candidate John McCain with his running mate Sarah Palin. Their party is now seen as the underdogs

‘Listen, mate,’ I said in the end. ‘I’m the one who is speaking English here. Why be a taxi driver if you don’t know where you’re going?’

Finally, he stopped the cab and made me get out. He wouldn’t give me my case until I gave him a tip. I couldn’t think where I was, so I and my enormous suitcase staggered into a ritzy store.

By now I looked as though I had been shipwrecked. ‘Do you know which way the Mercer Hotel is?’ I was met with blank stares.

‘Have you tried Googling it?’ one of the sales assistants asked. It turned out to be just four doors down.

I used to love visiting New York. It was cheap, it was happening and the people were friendly.

I found it less claustrophobic than London, much cleaner and infinitely safer.

Not any more. New Yorkers are rude, they are fearful and they are mind-bogglingly stupid.

A generation that was brought up to believe that they could do anything and have anything has come of age. And now that times are difficult, it is as though they are furious it hasn’t turned out the way they’d been promised.

When you come in to land over Newark, all you can see is a carpet of swimming pools and baseball diamonds and football pitches, but the TV is littered with ads aimed at people with breathing problems that begin: ‘Are you tired of storing all those empty oxygen tanks?’ In between the ads for smaller oxygen tanks are the endless reality shows.

The one that made me laugh the most was called America’s Greatest Dog, in which hot-housed pets performed stunts such as retrieving a ball from between the feet of an elephant. A strong contender for the first prize of a quarter of a million dollars was a small dog called Andrew, described by one of the judges, deadpan, as ‘the greatest Maltese I have ever witnessed.’

But even this programme made more sense than the hysterical rolling news channels.

On Fox News, after an item on a bestselling book entitled 48 Liberal Lies About American History, there was a report on how students are now smoking mint leaves, to which the blonde, over-made-up, strident female anchor responded: ‘I don’t want one of my children run over by an out-of-control teen who is high on this stuff.’

And while you might think that only Middle America would be all for Sarah Palin, lots of women in NYC are wearing T-shirts bearing the legend: ‘Conservative gun-toting mom!’ They love her.

After her mauling in her first big TV interview on Thursday, even sensible, educated, professional women in Manhattan were still singing her praises, despite the fact that she had no idea what the Bush doctrine was, and had to have it explained to her by the admittedly patronising and rather sexist Charles Gibson.

‘Have you ever met a world leader?’ he asked at one point.

Fox News stuck up for Palin, too, pointing out she had indeed been abroad, to both Canada and Mexico. On one day last week, Palin was simultaneously on the covers of Time, Newsweek, the New York Post, the Washington Post and the National Enquirer.

On Thursday, by coincidence the seventh anniversary of 9/11, she was all over the news again, tearfully waving off her son Track (what is it with these ridiculous names?) to fight in Iraq.

I hate the way both Palin, who wears her Down’s syndrome infant Trig on her lapel like a corsage, and John McCain, who wheels out his adopted daughter (the only obese Bangladeshi I have ever seen) at almost every opportunity, use their children as proof of their sincerity and trustworthiness.

And let’s be honest here: do we really want a woman with five children a hair’s-breadth from the presidency?

There is much talk that Barack Obama is thinking of dumping his anonymous veep and opting for Hillary, but it seems he has left it too late.

Obama’s new ad, which points out that McCain does not know how to send an email, comes across as spiteful. The new Republican ad accuses Obama of being ‘disrespectful,’ a sentiment American working women are responding to.

The Republicans are now seen as the underdogs. Like Andrew the Maltese, McCain suddenly looks like a winner.